Weird War Two: Strange Facts and Tales from the World's Weirdest Conflict

By M. J. Trow

Welcome to the wonderfully weird World War Two...

The Second World War was the bloodiest on record. It was the first total war in history when civilians - men, women and children - were on the front line as never before. With so many millions involved, the rumour machine went into overdrive, tall stories built on fear of the unknown. With so much at stake, boffins battled with each other to build ever more bizarre weapons to outgun the enemy. Nazi Germany alone had so many government-orchestrated foibles that they would be funny if they were not so tragic.

Parachuting sheep? Pilot pigeons? Rifles that fire round corners? Men who never were? You will find them all in these pages, the weird, wonderful and barely believable tales from World War Two.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BLKDOG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393650683

M. J. Trow

M.J. Trow was educated as a military historian at King’s College, London and is probably best known today for his true crime and crime fiction works. He has always been fascinated by Richard III and, following on from Richard III in the North, also by Pen and Sword, has hopefully finally scotched the rumour that Richard III killed the princes in the Tower. He divides his time between homes in the Isle of Wight and the Land of the Prince Bishops.

Book preview

WEIRD

WAR TWO

RICHARD DENHAM

&

M. J. TROW

Copyright © 2020 Richard Denham & M. J. Trow.

ISBN 978-1-913762-14-8

First published in 2016.

This edition published in 2020 by BLKDOG Publishing.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

www.blkdogpublishing.com

Other titles by Richard Denham:

The Britannia Trilogy

World of Britannia: Historical Companion to the Britannia Trilogy

Arthur: Shadow of a God

Robin Hood: English Outlaw

Prester John: Africa’s Lost King

Other titles by M. J. Trow:

The Inspector Lestrade Series

The Peter Maxwell Series

The Kit Marlowe Mystery Series

Who Killed Kit Marlowe?: A Contract to Murder in Elizabethan England

The Wigwam Murder

Also in this series:

Weirder War Two (2020)

‘The war, though we dislike it quite a bit,

Is sometimes laughable, you must admit.’

A.P. Herbert Badogliovski

Sunday Graphic 1945

Foreword

Introduction

Ahnenpass

‘And All That Jazz!’

Anti-tank Dogs

The Armistice Carriage

Atlantis

Balloon Bombs

Bat Bombs

Batmen

The Battle of Los Angeles

‘Bavarian’ Joe

Beefsteak Nazis

The Bellamy Salute

The Bitch of Buchenwald

The Black Devil

The Blitz Witch

The Blood Flag

Board Games for the Reich

The Bollocks of the Blitz

The Bombing of Brookings

The Bride of Belsen

The Brothers of the Forest

Busy Lizzie

The Carpet Chewer

Carrots

The Case of the Deadly Double

Castle Itter

Cat Bombs

The Channel White with Bodies

Churchill’s Toyshop

The Code Talkers

Comfort Women

Comics for the Kids

The Confidential Pigeon Service

The Craziest Pilot

Dawe’s D-Day

The Death Match

Degenerate Art Exhibition

The Disloyal Legions

The Edelweiss Pirates

The Enigma of Enigma

Escape Playing Cards

The Eternal Jew

Executive Order 9066

Explosive Rats

The Faith and Beauty Society

Fanta

Foo Fighters

Fraulein Hitler

Fukuryu – the Crouching Dragon

The German Glance

The Ghost Armies

The Ghost Plane

The Gleiwitz Incident

‘God with Us’

The Gold Train

Goliath

The Gran Sasso Raid

The Great Dictator

The Great Panjandrum

‘Gung Ho!’

Hermann’s a German

High as Kites

Hitler the Hypnotist

Hitler the Poet

Hitler’s American

Hitler’s Jew

Hitler’s Mischling

Hobart’s Funnies

The Honour Ring

The Horizontal Collaborators

The Horten Ho 2-29

‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’

The Ice Ship

The Jericho Trumpets

The Kilted Killer

The Kindertransport

Lady Death

The Last Crusade

The Last Tojo?

The Last to Surrender?

Lebensborn

The Legion of St George

The Leningrad Symphony

Lili Marlene

Lord Haw-Haw

‘Mad Jack’ Churchill

The Madonna of Stalingrad

The Magician Who Won the War

The Man Who Nearly Shot Hitler

The Man Who Never Was

The Man Who Survived

Max Heiliger

Maximilian Kolbe

Mein Kampf

Molotov Cocktails

Mr Chad

Mrs O’Grady

Nazi Sex Dolls

The Negro Soldier

The Night and Fog Decree

No Smoking!

The Nobel Peace Prize

Operation Starfish

Parachuting Nuns

Parachuting Sheep

Pets’ War

Pigeon Guided Missiles

The Riddle of Rudolf Hess

Round corners – Krummlauf

The Sailor Boy

Salon Kitty

The Schicklgruber Libel

The September Cavalry

The Ship That Became an Island

Signalling to the Luftwaffe

The Spitfires That Weren’t

Strength Through Joy

Struwwelhitler

The Sun Gun

That Moustache

Time Magazine

Unit 731

Unsinkable Sam

V for Victory

The Valkyrie Girls

Vanishing Celebrities

Volkssturm

The Voyage of the Damned

Welcome to Britain

The Werewolves

Wewelsburg Castle

The White Death

XX Committee

Foreword

Weird; out of the ordinary, strange, unusual ... odd, bizarre, incomprehensible.

New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

W

elcome to the wonderfully weird World War Two.

There is a rose-tinted sentimentality today that the ’40s were some utopian golden age and we have been sliding downhill ever since. My grandparents certainly believed this. As I grew up and developed an interest in the Second World War, I realised that it wasn’t quite like that. It was heroic and courageous; but it was also confusing; devastating; nightmarish and bizarre, words that we can't equate with the ‘good old days.’

Fond memories of ration books and making-do-and-mending, are offset by appalling brutality and loss of life. For every GI in a dance hall there was a concentration camp prisoner; for every daring commando there was a starving Soviet; for every fanatical SS officer there was a conscript who really had no choice. This book tries to touch on it all.

I have decided not to add sources and citations because this is essentially a whistle-stop recap of tales. There is still so much from the Second World War that experts do not agree on and many subjects remain disputed and controversial.

Many of the facts you are about to read are by no means certain. Some of the facts aren’t necessarily what actually happened, but what has been reported to have happened and wars always involve rumour; it is part of the psychology of conflict. I have deliberately tried to keep the writing style as light-hearted and non-confrontational as the horrors of war allow, and I would like to apologise in advance if I have written anything that offends.

My father was a soldier in the British Army and I enjoyed the stories he would tell me as a child. Though he recalled his military career fondly, he forbade me from ever joining up. One quote will always stick with me, ‘Life’s too short; thank God I never have to go through any of that bollocks ever again.’ I like to think that is a sentiment shared by all veterans and survivors of the countless conflicts throughout the world ever since the Second World War.

The world truly was on the brink of destruction, but by some miracle we pulled through. With a conflict that will soon pass from living memory, we owe it to the survivors to know what they suffered. We don’t have to judge; we just have to know.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank M J Trow for his excellent introduction. Whether you know a lot or a little about the Second World War, I do encourage you to read it; you will find his masterly summing up a useful starting point before you begin.

We were trying, as this book came together, to find a kind of rule of thumb of how bizarre something was, from weird to weirder to weirdest and you will find from one to three exclamation marks below the title on each page. 

Welcome to Weird War Two...

Richard Denham

2016

Introduction

The Second World War 1939-45

The Causes

The older generation still call it ‘Hitler’s War’ but monumental events that lead to the deaths of millions cannot be placed at any one man’s door. To understand how war came about in September 1939 we have to go back to the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War.

The victors at Versailles – Britain, France, Italy and the United States – decided that Germany had caused the First World War (which they hadn’t) and that Germany must pay. To that end, territory which once belonged to Germany was taken away, German armed forces were cut to almost non-existence and the country was saddled with a massive reparations bill of £3.5 billion (at least $46 billion today) and it couldn’t possibly pay.

The weak democratic Weimar government struggled on for ten years, but the financial disaster of October 1929 – the Wall Street crash – plunged Germany particularly deeply into recession and that gave a new impetus to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party, which, until then, had been regarded as something of a lunatic fringe. In a series of underhand political manoeuvres, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and set up a state he promised would last a thousand years – the Third Reich. In fact, it lasted just twelve and a half years and the steps that led to the Second World War also led to Germany’s second defeat in thirty years.

––––––––

The Steps to War 1933-39

1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor of a bitter and angry Germany.

1934 On the death of President Hindenberg, Hitler becomes President, giving himself the title Fuhrer (leader).

All members of the German army (Wehrmacht), air force (Luftwaffe) and navy (Kriegsmarine) swear a personal oath of allegiance to Hitler.

1935 In an Anglo-German naval agreement, Germany is allowed to build warships again.

Saarland (Germany’s smallest federal state) is returned to Germany after a referendum, having been removed from its control as part of the Treaty of Versailles.

1936 Hitler invades the demilitarized Rhineland, devoid of troops since Versailles, claiming that he has that right. Britain and France complain but do nothing.

Civil war breaks out in Spain and Hitler supplies General Francisco Franco’s Fascists with aircraft, experts and cash. The Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion bombs Guernica, giving the world the first taste of Blitzkrieg (Lightning War).

The Rome-Berlin Axis (the Pact of Steel) is signed between Hitler and Benito Mussolini, the Fascist duce (leader) of Italy, but not ratified until three years later.

Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact against the left wing countries of the Communist International, spearheaded by Russia (the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics).

1938 The Anschluss with Austria. On the face of it, a peaceful union, it is actually a Nazi coup.

Hitler claims the Sudetenland, part of the new state of Czechoslovakia, as German because of the large number of Germans living there. He needs lebensraum (living space) for his rapidly growing country.

At the Munich Conference in September, Hitler promises Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister and Edouard Daladier, his French counterpart, that he has no further ambitions in Europe.

1939 Ignoring Munich, Hitler invades Prague and Memel in March.

Anxious to expand to the east and to regain East Prussia, Hitler signs a non-aggression pact with Josef Stalin, the Russian leader.

Two days later, Britain signs an agreement with Poland that is clearly Hitler’s short-term target. On a pretext, on 1 September, Hitler launches Fall Weiss (Case White) and invades Poland.

On 3 September, with Hitler ignoring Chamberlain’s ultimatum to withdraw his troops, Britain declares war on Nazi Germany. So does France.

The Second World War has begun.

The Phoney War 1939-40

The French called it the Funny War (Drôle de Guerre); to the Germans it was Sitzkrieg (the Armchair War). The British coined the word ‘phoney’ from an article by an American journalist based in London. In the west, nothing happened. The east was a different story, however. Poland fell in the September War, crushed between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia and the execution squads of the einsatzgruppen went to work rounding up and shooting Jews – another step towards the Holocaust.

There was action at sea too. Two British aircraft carriers, the newest and most expensive ships afloat, had been sunk by October, and there were air raids on British naval bases in Scotland. The Kriegsmarine’s pocket battleship, the Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by her crew in the River Plate on 17 December. In terms of military capability, the Royal Navy had the edge, but the Luftwaffe, whose aircraft had been built secretly for years, were far ahead of the Royal Air Force, thanks to years of appeasement under Prime Ministers Baldwin and Chamberlain. In November, the USSR invaded Finland. This was the Winter War, in which the Finns, with their local knowledge, proved more than a match for the Red Army.

With spectacular mistiming, Neville Chamberlain told that House of Commons that, in delaying an all-out attack in the west, Hitler had ‘missed the bus’. Five days later, the Germans invaded Norway.

Collapse of the West 1940

It was the British who had misread the bus timetable! Norway was crucial to both sides, because of its strategic position overlooking the North Atlantic and its production of heavy water. The Germans moved first and despite a half-hearted British involvement, overran the country and set up a puppet government under Vidkun Quisling, whose name became synonymous with traitor (in fact, he had never made any secret of his Nazi sympathies). Denmark, hopelessly feeble against the power of the Reich, surrendered after only one day and the threat to flatten Copenhagen. Of the 16,000 troops in the Danish army, only thirteen were killed.

Failure in Norway led to a no-confidence vote in the Commons and Chamberlain was forced to resign. His replacement, on 10 May, was the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. He had been warning of the Nazi threat for years and this was to be his finest hour.

Churchill’s first day at Number Ten was the start of Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the simultaneous invasion of Holland, Belgium and France. On paper, the Allied and Axis armies were exactly matched but no one was prepared for the speed of the German advance under blitzkrieg. Aerial attacks, using a mixture of bombers (Heinkels and Dorniers) and fighters (Messerschmitts and Stukas) were followed by pincer movements on the ground spearheaded by the panzers, the tanks that had replaced horsed cavalry. The Allies had no leaders of the calibre of Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt and despite valiant defence, Holland surrendered in five days.

A British expeditionary force was rushed to France (exactly as in 1914) but was driven back to the coast at Dunkirk. The ‘miracle’ that happened there was the result of private